Where the Wind Chooses

Where the Wind Chooses--January 24, 2017

[Jesus said to Nicodemus:] "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." [John 3:8]

I had a drama teacher back in high school who used to say, "When the spirit moves you, you move."

It was her philosophy of blocking and staging characters for a play. Instead of making a bunch of already-nervous, acne-covered, hormone-riddled teenagers memorize a set of wooden body motions to accompany the lines they were trying to memorize (all the while in the midst of learning their actual academic subjects like chemistry and algebra, mind you!), my former teacher used to tell students to pay close attention to the words and the action going on around them in the story of the play, and the right actions, gestures, and movements would emerge almost naturally.  After all, if your character is angry, and you get that because you are paying attention to your character and the things in the story making your character angry, you will not to bat your eyelashes lovingly at the villain or start skipping across the stage.  And if your character is full of unrestrained joy, you'll know to hold your arms out with energy rather than sternly crossing them like a frustrated toddler.  But on the other hand, if some "expert" has told you, "Now raise your arms after this line," and then something goes wrong with the timing on stage during a performance, your whole delivery will be off, if you only learned a rote list of gestures and words.  You'll come off to the audience, less like a real person and more like, well, a high school sophomore stumbling through lines you do not really understand.  Better, my teacher used to say, to be so in tune with your character and the story of which you are a part that the movements arise organically out of you, than to be trained like Pavlov's dog to step here or turn there at a certain verbal cue.

Or, in summary form, when the spirit moves you, you move.

Curiously enough, even though Jesus never had to put on a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with Simon Peter, Mary, and Martha, Jesus says something similar about life in the movement he has begun.  "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.... so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."  That is to say, "When the Spirit moves you... you move."

We have been thinking together all this month about how the life of following Jesus is a lot like being on a sailboat together.  And if we are all on a sailboat, well, then, the next logical question is, "What, in our little mental picture, is the wind supposed to be?"  Who or what directs us, drives us, gives us momentum and direction?   Well, here is Jesus' crystal clear answer: the Spirit of the living God.  The Spirit, like the wind in a sail, blows and moves and directs us as he will, and we move.  And, really, it is an awful lot like what my old drama teacher used to tell us--when you know your Story well, and you know who you are within that Story, the Spirit's moving nudges you as naturally as the wind filling a sail.  It's not forced, but feels more and more natural.  It's not wooden or rote, but feels more like something flowing through you than acting on you.  And yet at the same time, it's not merely ME and MY WHIMS that are at work.  It's about something bigger than myself, something more beautiful than just me and my self-interest.

For the followers of Jesus, it is the Spirit--the living breath and wind of God--that moves us, more and more, as we seek to let God's direction become our direction, too.  It is, then, "the Spirit first," not "Me first" or "Profits first" or even "Family first" or "America first."  Those all miss the point--Jesus says it is the Spirit who moves us... and when the Spirit moves you, you move.  That is a joyful thing, and looks an awful lot of the time like an energy that moves us and leads you spontaneously rather than because you are worried about following rules or doing what someone else in power tells you to do.  The wind blows on the sail, and the sail does what sails are made to do in the wind: it moves the boat.  The Spirit blows into us, and more and more we open ourselves up to catch the direction of the Spirit... and we move.  It is free, and it is freeing.

Now, contrast all of that with someone dictating from on high with a bunch of wooden, artificial decrees or directions.  Here's an example that just floors me.  Did you know that in the first century, the Roman Empire issued an official decree, declaring that everybody was supposed to celebrate and rejoice over the anniversary of the birth of Caesar Augustus, and on the date of the anniversary of his ascension to power?  The official party line, approved of by ol' August himself, was, that Caesar's arrival on the world scene was "good news for all people," and that all subjects of the Roman Empire should celebrate with full-hearted civic devotion to dear, beloved Rome and its emperor... because Augustus was going to make everything so much better for everybody.  What a hilarious and yet terribly sad thing--to have to decree for people to celebrate!  To have to have an official imperial government edict telling them, "You're supposed to be smiling here!"  What outlandishly overblown arrogance to call one human leader's ascension to power "good news for all people" that would--as the Romans claimed about their Caesar--bring peace to all the world and unite all of the empire in a shared destiny with renewed pride for their empire.  What a load, to be technical about it, of dingo's kidneys.

Someone telling you that you are supposed to celebrate?  How forced is that?  How ridiculously artificial?  And you know what--it comes off that way to the watching world, like a nervous high schooler playing Hamlet and stumbling through his lines because he forgot when the director told him to raise his hand with the skull in it. 

That's not the Christian life!  The community of Jesus' followers is a movement who dares to let the Spirit blow, and move, and speak, and breathe into us, rather than a bunch of nervous actors waiting to be told when and where to walk on stage, or a bunch of frightened citizens of the empire who have to be told when to fake at celebrating over their emperor.  Jesus has been telling us all along--when the Spirit moves you, you move.

And the Spirit has a way--not of being predictable but of being faithful--and of consistently showing up in wonderfully surprising places, like alongside the brokenhearted and fearful, among the poor and hungry, welcoming the outcast, leading people to lay down their weapons and their burdens, and breathing courage into hearts to help those in harm's way or caught in traps of their own making.  That's where you find the Spirit moving--never quite able to be pinned down to our exact expectations, but blowing like regular wind currents on the sea that you can turn your sail to.

Where will the Spirit move you today?

Lord Jesus, we freely and joyfully celebrate that you are our Lord, without needing and single official proclamation to order us to fake it.  Let your Spirit move us like wind filling our sails... today and always.